December 6, 2011

Paisley & District Chamber of CommerceDecember 6, 2011at the Treasure Chest Museum 7-9 pmThanks to Judy McKinnon for opening the doors of the Treasure Chest museum for us.Attendants: Mary Gail Johnston, Jennifer Harris, Sandra Blodgett, We reviewed the winter agenda. We have added Kara from Spruce the Bruce on February 12, 2012 and an invitation to empty store front owners to speak with our task force on March 6, 2012. Via email, Micheline Mann reminded us that the task force could/should be actively recruiting businesses to Paisley. She sent a nice ad to help get us in the right direction. We will also begin dicussing this at the Feb 21, 2012 meeting.It has been decided that we will again, not ask for membership fees for 2012. We are interested in keeping the “UNITY IN COMMUNITY” and do not want to divide the community by members and non-members as long as we can. We will host a fundraising event during the year if necessary to help offset any expenses we have and any project we undertake will need to pay for itself. We considered doing a community dinner raising $2000 (however history says we have very limited manpower) so we are considering doing a video dance for adults to raise about $6000. We could also help the library and the museum with this money if they could lend us manpower.We will invite business owners (automatic Chamber member) to help out in any way they can. If they do not have time or resources to offer, they may make a financial donation at any time to show that they are interested in the future of our business community. We are all in this together.Sandra made a motion to pay the $550 to sunsets.com for 2011 that we had, earlier in the year asked the municipality to pay but they didn’t. Mary Gail 2nded it and All were in favour.Jenn made a motion that she will contact the Heritage Steam Show before Jan 17 to see if they could cover the $550 for us for 2012. Sandra 2nded the motion and All were in favour.We will consider having a booth at Maple Syrup Fest and the Steam Show next year in conjunction with the museum and library.Sandra made a motion to pay the museum $100 donation for the meetings we held there this fall. Jenn 2nded it and all were in favour.Sandra will check to see if the donation to the Legion was made.Sandra will call all the BR&E people to get all the BR&E’s back before Friday. If we get these sent away this week they should be ready by Feb. 21 which is when the Task Force will be able to begin their work.There is a Leadership Course taking place in Hanover for 10 weeks in the winter that Sandra feels she should take. (others are invited and encouraged to join her) Unfortunately, this is on Tuesday nights. There has been a cry go out for afternoon meetings, this might be the perfect time to try that out. We will leave this as an incomplete to be decided later. We will need new brochures this spring. Last year we made 10,000 and we are down to 2,000. We would be all out except there was no money to mail them to places asking for them. With that in mind, and the success of the project last year, Jen suggested we add a small cost to each current ad prices to cover this need. Sandra also mentioned that the new brochure should have a new look and include new stories and information inside, just for variety. People could collect them! We should put the year on the cover. We want to be sure that the airports have our brochures and especially places where the Grey Bruce Air-bus travels. This brochure needs to be completed by March 2, 2012.We will have one more meeting this year. It will be on December 20 at 1pm in Jenn’s Office. We will be putting together a package of information for all the businesses. The package will include:-the 2012 policies and procedures handbook,-an old brochure and a order form,-the winter agenda,-nomination forms ,-an invitation to participate on the Task Force,-an invitation to join us for the elections and-a 2012 Advocate order form.Sandra presented a numbered coupon book idea she would like to try as a pilot project with the Farmers Market. The PFM board has not approved it yet. Jenn and Mary Gail thought there were no problems with the idea. It would consist of interested businesses putting in a coupon worth $10 each (set up so it is not $10 loss to the business). PFM would print 22 books for the weekly gift basket at the PFM (22 weeks). It would be worth $200-$500 and encourage more visitors to come to Paisley every Saturday morning in the summer. This is an opportunity for COOPERATIVE ADVERTISING (RADIO). Using Spruce the Bruce Ads Promotion, it could be a very inexpensive way to get people to Paisley.Next meeting will be on December 19 at 1pm at Key Lime Creative.Minutes taken by Sandra Blodgett